The scientific community becomes aware – It won’t work without parapsychology – I come to the realization that I have as good as nothing to expect from the scientists

The distinct presence of voices of an unknown origin, which could be recorded on tape in the presence of reliable witnesses resulted in some attention being paid by certain members of the scientific community.

During the course of that winter many small groups of interested listeners gathered now and then, and among them were Dr. Bjorkhem and various other scientists. A well-known Swedish scientist, Professor Oelaender, also the secretary of the Parapsychology Association with the Stockholm School of Higher Education, Mrs. Eva H., helped me in contacting a sound expert from the High Technical School (Expert for acoustic and vibration physics) in Stockholm. After I had played a few examples of my tapes, he gave his consent to take part in a recording session in our house.

For that particular evening I had borrowed a new tape recorder, since my own was rather worn out. Besides Dr. Bjorkhem and Mrs. Eva H., a few other friends were present.

On that evening it became clear to me for the first time, how senseless and useless such public demonstrations are. I realized that it doesn’t make ay sense to try and convince some experts or to give any kind of importance to their opinions. No doubt these gentlemen were very well informed in their own field. One of my guests had actually constructed an electromagnetic “talking device,” that could create words and human voices on tape with electronic impulses. 62 This technical masterpiece presented no doubt a unique solution that took many years of tedious and complicated research. Which is precisely why none of these gentlemen have ever been seriously involved in the field of parapsychology or paraphysics.

Being committed to the methods of empirical science, they were not interested in occult phenomena that triggered their suspicions and distrust to the highest degree.

It was only natural that both these gentlemen demonstrated reserved skepticism and alert caution towards my tape recordings, after all this mysterious sound phenomenon was out of their area of research and competence.

The gentlemen had brought their own tape recorders and tapes. At first, all three recorders were on strike for one reason or another, but after a little while we managed to get two of them to function.

I thought then, how difficult, almost hopeless it was for these empirical scientists to comprehend without bias or prejudice something totally new that had never been seen. After all, it had also caused me many months of hard struggle before I overcame my own skepticism.

The most part of the evening passed in discussion. The few recordings we did, yielded no results.

“How does this fit in with hypnosis?” asked one of the broadcasting people, who directed the question to Dr. Bjorkhem. “Well…”, his reply spun out slowly, “You better ask those gentlemen, the experts who reject hypnosis without knowing the first thing about it.”

63 Let me say here that of all the researchers and scholars that I have encountered over the years, no one exceeded Dr. Bjorkhem in humility, modesty and the total absence of bias. I then realized that if Sweden’s number one hypnotist felt obliged to use sarcasm in replying to a scientist’s question he must have personally encountered endless disappointments and rejection. During the course of the evening, I played back some earlier recordings, including the tape from New Years Eve. As the gentlemen clearly perceived the audible voices, one of them remarked if it couldn’t have been that an amateur radio station played a joke on me.

“Well, that can’t be ruled out,” I agreed, “but the amateurs must be psychic too, because how could they time the very moment when I turn the equipment on?” The positive result of that evening was that I finally realized the uselessness of such a demonstration in front of these so-called experts. Why should I try to interest people whose minds are totally set against something that they could not possibly know anything about. After all, I was still stumbling around in the dark myself, even if here and there I could glimpse some connections, it was simply too early to seek to present the subject to others, particularly to researchers in unrelated braches of science.